Sen. Shaheen to amend her financial disclosure form

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said on Thursday that her financial disclosure form would be amended to show that stock options in a breast cancer research company expired.

The move was quickly cast by the Republican State Committee as further evidence that her family engaged in “a shady stock deal” involving the company, Ultrawave Labs Inc.

.Ultrawave was the beneficiary of $78,000 in federal stimulus funding in 2009, the same year William Shaheen, the Democratic senator’s husband, became an adviser to the firm, according to a report in The Boston Globe Tuesday. William Shaheen is a partner in Shaheen & Gordon, the prominent Concord legal and lobbying firm, and it set up a “stimulus opportunities team” in 2009, according to the Globe...Sen. Shaheen voted in favor of President Obama’s stimulus program.

A Shaheen spokesman had told the New Hampshire Union Leader and other media outlets that William Shaheen’s stock options in Ultrawave had expired before they were acted on...But the Republican committee pointed out that, according to Shaheen’s 2013 Senate disclosure form, the options didn’t expire until 2019.

Shaheen spokesman Harrell Kirstein said on Thursday that the form would be amended to reflect the fact that the options had in fact expired. He noted that it was not unusual for members of the Senate to amend the disclosure forms...“Jeanne Shaheen is proud to be a leader in the fight to improve women’s health care and has been for more than 20 years,” Kirstein said. “Any attempt to use her tireless advocacy for women’s health care for political attacks is outrageous. “The Recovery Act did not mention the company, the industry involved, or the grant the company would apply for months later.”..In a news release Thursday, the Republican State Committee noted that Shaheen was amending her form “to correct errors regarding her shady stock deal.”

GOP Committee Chairman Jennifer Horn stated: “It’s clear that Senator Shaheen provided inaccurate information to the Senate Ethics Committee on her personal financial disclosure form. This error raises questions about a potential conflict of interest involving the Shaheens and their involvement with a company that received federal stimulus funds.”..The accusations come after Shaheen agreed to make publicly available her tax returns for the past six years, after Scott Brown — Shaheen’s most high-profile Republican rival in the 2014 election — did so and challenged her to do the same...